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Custom Properties Change Question

I've inherited a SW instance and it has a fair amount of custom properties. One of those is a label for departments, and of course, one of those departments was renamed. I can easily edit the name in the Manage Custom Properties page, but before I do that, I need to know if that renaming event will update all the references elsewhere.

For example, department "Cloud Ops" split into "Cloud Ops - XXX". There are existing alerts set up to filter out interfaces and nodes without the "Cloud Ops" attribute. So would renaming the custom property update references elsewhere in the DB? I'm guessing yes... but really don't want to make more work by guessing wrong.

Thanks.

  • The short answer is: no, it will not 'cascade down' and update your alerts, reports, widget filters, etc.  You could probably automate that work to make the changes globally, but I don't think it'll be worth the effort - especially considering your Cloud Ops team 'split' and didn't just get renamed.

    This is by design because sometimes managed entities do shift between departments and we want to maintain the filtering based on the roles/responsibilities.

    What I've heard many customers started doing is building their reports/widgets/alerts/etc. around Orion 'Groups.'  That way if 'ownership' or something else changes, it's changed in the group and the logic of the reports, et. al. uses the Group Membership for it's key and not an individual custom property.  Just a thought.

  • That's a great tip, . Can we point people to a post anywhere on THWACK that describes this approach and how to implement it?

  • Sure thing... if it exists.  I know that I've heard of some people starting this process, but I haven't specifically read anything about it.

  • OK, thanks for the quick answer. I do have another scenario that's close to this one; it's just a simple acronym rename in a custom property. I suspect it's the same issue though. It's basically renaming XYZ to ZYX. No splitting. 

  • Yeah - like I said, it could be done with some custom scripting for the reports and stuff, but it's not something I would run and do immediately unless there was a serious need.  My personal best practice is to be VERY descriptive in custom widget subtitles, report descriptions, and alert descriptions.

    Custom Widget Filter(s)

    Report Description

    Alert Description

    That way if something renders empty or doesn't show what I think it should show, it's easy to know to go back and check things I can see easily which report is filtered for 'XYZ' only.  (Especially since the "Description" field is searchable in the Manage Alerts and Manage Reports interfaces.)

  • Link to another forum post that contains a report (Custom Properties Impact Assesment): https://thwack.solarwinds.com/product-forums/the-orion-platform/f/report-lab/8427/node-custom-properties-uses-report

    I have used this report to identify Custom Properties and where they are referenced in Alerts, Widgets (resources) etc.

    The report as provided there works for Node Custom Properties. It can be modified to work for Interface Custom Properties and Group Custom Properties (copy the report and edit replacing the references to Node CPs with the relevant Interface and Group ones).

    Thing to look out for - if you have a CP that is the same as a general property, then you will get lots of info that isn't actually referencing the CP (example - we had a Node CP defined - Bandwidth) the report returned tons of reference where the word "Bandwidth" was detected but most of them weren't where the CP Bandwidth was used).

    The report will help quickly and easily eyeball any alerts, widgets, reports etc. you may have to update to the new CP name if you change.